First Documents Emerge From Vatican Archives, Including Letter From Edith Stein

VATICAN CITY Feb. 19 — The first documents from newly opened Vatican archives dealing with the Roman Catholic Church's relations with Germany on the eve of World War II are beginning to emerge, including a letter seeking papal intervention against the Nazis written by a famed Jewish convert to Catholicism, Edith Stein.

The letter's existence has been known for decades Stein wrote about it before she was killed in a Nazi death camp in 1942 but its text was published for the first time Wednesday in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

At the same time, other documents from the era are coming to light in the Italian media, including one some historians say is proof that Vatican did intervene on behalf of the Jews: a document dated April 4, 1933, that shows the Vatican ordered its diplomats in Germany to warn Hitler's government not to persecute Jews.

The documents have become available following the Vatican's decision to open its prewar archives to scholars years ahead of schedule in a bid to deflect criticism that it was silent in the face of the Holocaust.

The archives available to researchers as of last weekend cover the Vatican's relations with Germany from 1922-39.

During those years, Pius XII pope from 1939-58 and accused by some historians of failing to do enough to protect Jews was a Vatican diplomat in Germany and later its secretary of state.

At the same time, Stein was a teacher in Muenster, Germany, who joined the Carmelite order of nuns after converting to Catholicism. She had been born into an Orthodox Jewish German family in 1891.

On April 12, 1933, she wrote a letter to the then-pope, Pius XI, asking that he speak out against the "war of exterminating Jewish blood" by the Nazis.

"Not only the Jews but also thousands of Catholic faithful in Germany and I believe in all the world for weeks are waiting for and hoping that the Church of Christ will make its voice heard against such abuses in the name of Christ," Stein wrote in the letter.

She said Catholics "feared the worst for the worldwide image of the Church itself, if the silence continues further. We are also convinced that this silence cannot in the long run obtain peace from the current German government."

Stein referred to her letter in a 1938 autobiography, wondering whatever became of it.

"I know that my letter was sealed when it was delivered to the Holy Father some time later; I even received his blessing for myself and my loved ones. But nothing came of it. ... My fears concerning the future of German Catholics have been gradually realized in the course of the years that followed," she wrote.

Historians also have wondered what became of the letter, because they say it may have been the first of many appeals to the Vatican for intervention on behalf of the Jews.

In 2000, a commission of Jewish and Catholic scholars appointed by the Vatican and a Jewish group listed Stein's letter as one of the documents they hoped to see to reach conclusions about the Vatican's wartime record.

Specifically, they asked how the letter was received in Rome and whether they could see a copy of it. The panel disbanded in 2001, saying they couldn't proceed further without more access to the Vatican's wartime archives.

Their preliminary report said Stein's 1933 letter had asked Pius XI to issue an encyclical condemning anti-Semitism but that request is not specifically made in the letter reproduced by Corriere. The newspaper said Stein merely planned to ask for an encyclical if she ever obtained an audience with the pope.

Another document that has emerged, according to the Catholic-issues news agency Zenit, is an April 4, 1933, letter by Eugenio Pacelli then the Vatican secretary of state and later Pope Pius XII instructing his nuncio in Germany to intervene after some "important" Jewish personalities had appealed to the pope "to ask for his intervention against the danger of anti-Semitic excesses in Germany."

Rabbi Michael Signer, a professor of Jewish thought and culture at the University of Notre Dame, said the document is significant to the extent that it showed that the Vatican was sending its concerns to Germany and asking for its diplomats there to intervene.

But he noted that, according to other documents, the head of the German Bishops' Conference had three days earlier resisted a local plea for intervention after the Nazis issued a boycott of Jewish businesses.

"They (Vatican officials) were getting requests and the requests were being put through channels," Signer said. "It doesn't mean there was any result. It was going to a German episcopate that certainly at this stage didn't want to get involved."

Stein sought refuge in Holland, but later she and other Jewish converts to Catholicism there were shipped to Auschwitz to punish that country's bishops for having spoken out against Hitler. Stein died at Auschwitz on Aug. 9, 1942.

American Catholic’s Saint of the Day

August 9, 2007

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)

(1891-1942)

A brilliant philosopher who stopped believing in God when she was 14, Edith Stein was so captivated by reading the autobiography of Teresa of Avila that she began a spiritual journey that led to her Baptism in 1922. Twelve years later she imitated Teresa by becoming a Carmelite, taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

Born into a prominent Jewish family in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), Edith abandoned Judaism in her teens. As a student at the University of Göttingen, she became fascinated by phenomenology, an approach to philosophy. Excelling as a protégé of Edmund Husserl, one of the leading phenomenologists, Edith earned a doctorate in philosophy in 1916. She continued as a university teacher until 1922 when she moved to a Dominican school in Speyer; her appointment as lecturer at the Educational Institute of Munich ended under pressure from the Nazis.

After living in the Cologne Carmel (1934-38), she moved to the Carmelite monastery in Echt, Netherlands. The Nazis occupied that country in 1940. In retaliation for being denounced by the Dutch bishops, the Nazis arrested all Dutch Jews who had become Christians. Teresa Benedicta and her sister Rosa, also a Catholic, died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz on August 9, 1942.

Pope John Paul II beatified Teresa Benedicta in 1987 and canonized her in 1998.

Comment:

The writings of Edith Stein fill 17 volumes, many of which have been translated into English. A woman of integrity, she followed the truth wherever it led her. After becoming a Catholic, Edith continued to honor her mother’s Jewish faith. Sister Josephine Koeppel, O.C.D. , translator of several of Edith’s books, sums up this saint with the phrase, “Learn to live at God’s hands.”

Quote:

In his homily at the canonization Mass, Pope John Paul II said: “Because she was Jewish, Edith Stein was taken with her sister Rosa and many other Catholics and Jews from the Netherlands to the concentration camp in Auschwitz, where she died with them in the gas chambers. Today we remember them all with deep respect. A few days before her deportation, the woman religious had dismissed the question about a possible rescue: ‘Do not do it! Why should I be spared? Is it not right that I should gain no advantage from my Baptism? If I cannot share the lot of my brothers and sisters, my life, in a certain sense, is destroyed.’”
Addressing himself to the young people gathered for the canonization, the pope said: “Your life is not an endless series of open doors! Listen to your heart! Do not stay on the surface but go to the heart of things! And when the time is right, have the courage to decide! The Lord is waiting for you to put your freedom in his good hands.”

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

Saint Edith Stein
Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Virgin & Martyr
Optional Memorial
August 9th
co-patroness of Europe

"I even believe that the deeper one is drawn into God, the more one must 'go out of oneself'; that is, one must go to the world in order tp carry the divine life into it."
From The Collected Works of Edith Stein
Self Portrait In Letters 1916-1942
translated by Josephine Koeppe, O.C.D., quote page 54
letter #45 to Sr. Callista Kopf, OP ,presumably sent to Munich
History -- Prayer -- Gospel Reading -- Homily Pope John Paul II at Canonization (1998) -- Homily Pope John Paul II at European Synod (1999) -- Edith Stein and the Contemplative Vocation -- Prayer from St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross -- Verses for a Pentecost Novena

History
Edith was born in Breslau, Germany, on October 12, 1891, the youngest of seven children in a prominent Jewish family. Edith abandoned Judaism as early as 1904, becoming a self-proclaimed atheist. Her brilliant intellect was seeking truth, and she entered the University of Gottingen, where she became a protégé of the famed philosopher of Edmund Husserl. She was also a proponent of the philosophical school of phenomenology both at Gottingen and Freiburg in Breisgau. She earned a doctorate in 1916 and emerged as one of Europe's brightest philosophers. One of her primary endeavors was to examine phenomenology from the perspective of Thomistic thought, part of her growing interest in Catholic teachings. Propelled by her reading of the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila, she was baptized on January 1, 1922. Giving up her university post, she became a teacher in the Dominican school at Speyer, receiving as well in 1932 the post of lecturer at the Educational Institute of Munich, resigning under pressure from the Nazis, who were then in control of Germany.
In 1934, Edith entered the Carmelite Order. Smuggled out of Germany into the Netherlands in 1938 to escape the mounting Nazi oppression, she fell into the hands of the Third Reich with the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in 1940. Arrested in 1942 with her sister Rosa (also a convert) as part of the order by Hitler to liquidate all non-Aryan Catholics, she was taken to Auschwitz, and, on August 9 or 10, 1942, she died in the gas chamber there.
Pope John Paul II canonized Edith on October 11, 1998.
[taken from John Paul II's Book of Saints, published by OSV 1999]
Collect and Readings: From the Common of Virgins or Martyrs
Prayer:
Lord, God of our fathers,
you brought Saint Teresa Benedicta
to the fullness of the science of the cross
at the hour of her martyrdom.
Fill us with that same knowledge;
and, through her intercession,
allow us always to seek after you, the supreme truth,
and to remain faithful until death to the covenant of love
ratified in the blood of your Son
for the salvation of all men and women.
We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Gospel Readings -- John 4:19-24
The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain; and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship". Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."

[Prayer and readings from a Carmelite web site: http://www.carmelites.ie/Saints/edithstein.htm]

Prayer from St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
"When night comes, and retrospect shows that everything was patchwork and much that one had planned left undone, when so many things rouse shame and regret, then take all as is, lay it in God's hands, and offer it up to Him. In this way we will be able to rest in Him, actually to rest and to begin the new day like a new life."

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